


A Series of Happy/Comforting Character Studies, in Apology for Killing Tony

by thorin_oakengofuckyourself



Series: i would like to issue an apology to the avengers fandom [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, i hope i provided well enough i did try, you guys really needed something nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-06 18:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/738717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorin_oakengofuckyourself/pseuds/thorin_oakengofuckyourself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. natasha and tony

**Author's Note:**

> yall need jesus  
> well, yall actually need something happy to help you cope with my merciless slow murder of our favourite billionaire, so here i am providing  
> a couple of you asked for it and i hope its alright  
> im not a fluffy writer  
> i can rip your heart out through your throat but i cant give you happiness or satisfying porn its a tragedy  
> take this series of short happy observations as penance for my injuries to you uvu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> natasha and tony have a special relationship: she pretends not to care about him and he pretends not to try to make her smile at every available opportunity.

They are loading up into the Quinjet, getting ready to head to the Helicarrier or home or God knows where. Tony has shed the armour — well, it would be more appropriate to say that he was ripped out of it by Steve and Thor in a panic — and he’s so relieved; the armour was like another body, a cold one, pressing down on him and keeping him still and he was _terrified_. He shakes himself and focuses on Fury’s voice giving stern, terse praises through the comm system because he doesn’t want to think about being in the armour; not now, when he can still feel it trapping him.

There is a shift in the air to his left and he jumps, his head snapping around to find Natasha standing next to him, her lovely green eyes pointed calmly ahead. He breathes out slowly and winces as his ribs make themselves known; grateful as he is that somebody broke his fall, the big guy wasn’t exactly gentle. Natasha spares him a glance and it’s exactly that: a glance — quick, cursory, sweeping up from his knees to his eyes. She raises an eyebrow at him and her gaze flickers down to his sides before she turns away, and Tony knows her well enough by now to watch the tension leave her shoulders.

He’s seen Natasha’s _Look_ before. It’s her way of making sure that they are all alright; he’s seen it sweep over Clint and make Steve blush like a virgin and force even Thor to deflate a little (and all in the last 20 minutes or so, actually) — it’s all the concern she outwardly expresses, and it’s enough. Tony gifts her a smile and her gorgeous scarlet lips curl up in return, a shy and feminine gesture that she usually reserves for him or Clint.

Tony has known Natasha Romanoff for a year or so, and he loves her, he does; she’s matter-of-fact and disciplined and her glare is like ice (and Tony swears to never again be naked in her presence), but she is kind and loyal. Earning her trust and concern is Tony’s greatest accomplishment to date (but he doesn’t tell JARVIS this, it would hurt his feelings). She knows when to help him and when to let him be, and she always has something quiet and soft and toneless to say that turns his mood around and makes him think. Tony loves her fiercely and he’s impressed with the fact that she is the star of the show. She brought the team together and was the voice of reason, and she made them stick together when everything fell apart. Natasha Romanoff punches her fears in the face, and Tony fucking loves it.

Hers is a passion that bubbles just under the surface, but you have to look hard to find a reaction from her. She protects herself fiercely, but she lets him behind the mask sometimes and allows him to see what goes on inside of her. He is extremely humbled (although he doesn’t say, but he’s sure she notices) and his aching chest swells with affection.

Natasha is the first of the Avengers that Tony calls his friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love nat and tonys relationship so much dont touch me  
> shes so stolid and serene and no-nonsense and tony needs someone that stable and self-assured in his life because hes such a colossal fuck-up at literally everything he does  
> tony says "help me" and natasha says "help yourself, i know you can"  
> she believes in him, and she knows from the moment they meet the right ways to push him to get him to turn his life around
> 
> she might very well have saved his life by being present during iron man 2, and not just because fury brought her in to try and muscle him into doing something about his little palladium issue
> 
> she reminds me of tony a lot -- they both care about the people they love, but theyre kind of broken themselves and they put all their efforts into fixing their loved ones (behind the scenes, in the dark, where nobody will notice, because for whatever reason they dont think they deserve to be fixed themselves) and making the people around them happy, as inconspicuously as they can
> 
> a psa: i love natasha. a lot...


	2. bruce and nat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bruce is an exercise in trust. luckily, natasha is in need of a workout.
> 
> i like to think that she inspires courage in him.

Bruce sits quietly on the couch, his hands clasped together and his glasses pushed up into unruly waves of salt-and-pepper hair. He’s still a little shell-shocked from the fighting, although he’s managed to clean himself up and soothe the bruises that are already bleeding purple on his chest and arms.

He shifts through his memories of the whole fiasco, and Natasha’s face blinks into existence in his mind. She looks scared, _terrified_ , her voice hoarse as she swears on her life that she will protect him, that she will help him get away, and he’s scared too, he doesn’t want to hurt her, but he can’t stop the Other Guy —

“We could use a little worse.”

A quiet, unsure smile works its way onto his face and he sighs.

Bruce does not like to hurt people. He’s a _doctor_ , for Christ’s sake — he’s supposed to help them. He’s spent so long hiding out in Calcutta, he’s put so much effort into chaining the Other Guy down and fighting down the big, angry green gorilla on his back in order to do some low-key good in the world. He’s spent so long trying to figure out the secret to keeping the Hulk down, and then suddenly Natasha — _stunning_ , _beautiful_ , _dangerous_ Natasha — swooped in and blew down that house of cards with one super-spy breath and a “We need you.”

Natasha is a charmer. She managed to wheedle him away from his security blanket in India, and she, in all truth, is the reason that Bruce even showed up in New York. He remembers the look of absolute terror on that unflappable woman’s face, and he remembers wanting to prove her wrong. For her friendship and trust, he would be more than the monster.

The words of the security guard who threw him pants bang around in his head: “Are you a little guy that turns big, or are you a big guy that turns little?”

He groans, because, in truth, he still doesn’t know.

“My money is on a little guy,” muses the voice behind him — _he said that out loud?_ — and Bruce puffs up like a frightened cat before Natasha’s slight hand on his shoulder settles his fried nerves. She slips over the back of the couch to join him, a cup of coffee and an e-reader in her hands. She wakes up the e-reader and her eyes scan the page, pointedly ignoring him as she sips at the coffee that has gone sandy-coloured from so much sweetener and cream. Bruce thinks it says something about her, the way she likes her coffee so sweet.

Natasha doesn’t look at him once in the three hours that they sit there, alone and uninterrupted. She is like a stone at Bruce’s side, and he finds that he’d rather have Natasha behind him than a solid wall. Her silence is a gift he knows she knows he needs, and he gratefully accepts it with a weary smile. It is a thinly-veiled show of trust, and it means everything to him.

Natasha does not judge him. She isn’t afraid of him or skittish around him. She is calm and collected and a comforting presence without saying a word. The fact that she trusts him enough to sit by him and do so mundane a thing as read the paper loosens something in Bruce’s chest he didn’t know was paining him.

“Thank you,” he sighs. Natasha makes a small noise in the back of her throat without looking up, but her hand squeezes his knee gently and her lips curl up just a touch.

Bruce finds that he is, indeed, a little guy who turns big sometimes. All he needed was for someone to tell him the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you havent caught on i adore natasha with every fibre of my being  
> im trying not to make this "mama natasha soothes the teams hurts" but its hard


	3. steve and tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from hopeful reminder of his past to crushing disappointment to begrudging partner to saviour, tony stark has been many things to steve rogers. now, he might just be making his way to friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tried hard  
> VERY hard  
> not to make this shippy and i hope i succeeded because, while i know its the most popular ship in the fandom, it doesnt appeal to everybody!
> 
> i loved those code-names  
> they are so fun  
> and theyre taken blatantly from this post on hoursagos tumblr because honestly tony: http://hoursago.tumblr.com/post/42373449563/also-from-now-on-well-be-using-code-names-x

     It's game night in the tower. And, per the norm, Tony has come up with something ridiculous.

     " _Laser tag_ ," he says, breathes it out with triumph on his face in a way that's obviously meant to inspire awe. Steve blinks. _What the hell is laser tag?_

     Tony catches his blank gaze and rolls his eyes for effect. "It's self-explanatory, Captain No-Fun-Allowed. I give you this laser gun, I turn off the lights in the tower and put on black lights, you put on this vest," he throws one at Steve's face, "and I let you loose in my home to try and shoot each other like wild animals."

     Steve shakes his head, mortified, but decides he had better just go with it. Tony is harder to stop once he's set on something than several trains combined (Steve would know, he tried to stop a train once).

     "We'll be using code names for this exercise, because code names are fun as shit. You can address me as Eagle One," Tony says with a wicked grin. He ghosts around where the team is assembled on couches and in chairs, echoing some weird game of Duck Duck Goose as he names them.

     Natasha is christened, "If I Had to Pick a Chick." She doesn't smile, but her eyes are laughing, and Tony notices. He moves on to baptize his next victim.

     Clint: "It Happened in a Dream Once." Clint howls, doubling over in peals of laughter. Coulson groans from the far corner of the room.

     Thor: "I'd Be Lying if I Said I Hadn't Thought About It." Thor opens his mouth to say something along the lines of, "I do not understand," but Tony shushes him and curls his dexterous fingers in Bruce's wavy hair.

     He is dubbed, "Been There Done That," and the good doctor smacks the engineer's hands away, but there's no venom in it. Tony makes for him and Steve tenses, suddenly nervous. He is looked up and down pensively for a full minute before Tony's hand drops from his beard and he lets a devilish grin take over his face.

     "Currently Doing That," he crows, and Steve does not blush. He _knows_ he doesn't, because he thinks about it very strongly. Giggling to himself, Tony dubs Coulson "Eagle Two" and collapses in laughter at the agent's relieved murmur of "Thank God" from where he sits, doing paperwork.

     Then there is a long stretch of time where Tony explains the rules and the mechanics of the guns and vests. He talks with his hands, obviously excited, and Steve tunes him out as he observes his teammate.

     Tony is an enigma wrapped in a peculiarity topped with mystery, rolled into a ball and tied with eccentric string. And Steve loves it. He found it hard to like Howard Stark's son at first, but as Tony became a common occurrence and he grew into a separate entity from his father, Steve tolerated him.

     If he had had to describe Anthony Stark in three words, at the beginning of the Initiative, they would've been "brash, egocentric, and downright rude." And those things are still true, but Steve has been watching.

     He watches everyone on the team; it's a habit for him. They are his people now, and he needs to learn about them. He knows how Natasha takes her coffee and what Tony says and does to lure a rare smile onto her face. He knows that Clint sometimes sleeps in the rafters just to fuck with him, and he knows that Tony is often down in the shop working on new weapons or new ways to keep their archer safe, what with his tendency towards acrobatics off of buildings and all. He knows that Bruce absolutely _adores_ the labs that Tony has gifted him and that he has a weakness for cats, and he knows that a little ribbing has done the doctor good -- Tony was the first one to treat Dr. Banner as Dr. Banner, not a monster, and he set the tone for the rest of the team. He knows that Tony is the only one who can get Thor to talk about Loki -- the _real_ Loki, the one who was his brother in Asgard, not the crackpot magician they fought in New York -- despite the personal grudge Tony holds against the particular brand of crazy that is Loki Laufeyson.

     To say that Tony drives Steve up the wall is to say that Natasha has killed a few people in her line of work. He is a nuisance; he's rude, disrespectful, flippant, and has an intense and pathological distaste for authority figures. His idea of gentle teasing borders on sexual harassment, and if Steve hears "Star Spangled Man" when he walks into a room one more time he will _throttle_ Tony. He drinks too much and sleeps around and dumps all his work on poor Miss Potts in favour of barricading himself in the shop to work on whatever.

     But, for all his many faults, Tony is a good person. It just took a while for Steve to notice. The little things he does, like prompting Thor for stories of his home when he notices that tiny crease of unhappiness appear between the god's brows, or clunking a beer down in front of Natasha and getting piss drunk with her because Clint is somewhere else and she feels unsafe and alone, or rising to Steve's challenge and nearly getting himself blown to kingdom come above Manhattan just to prove him wrong, are what makes Tony a much greater man than Steve first believed him to be.

     Tony values the lives of his teammates approximately 10 times more than he does his own, and Steve doesn't know why. He walks around like he's done something wrong, like he isn't deserving of the affection of these people. Tony gives and gives and gives, of his tech and his space and his heart, and he asks nothing in return.

     He sacrifices for the team because he loves them. Slowly, Steve feels a hard little stone of admiration and respect -- even, dare he say, friendship -- settle in his chest, and the world is brighter for all Tony's efforts.

     He treats them like people: with love that he only lets them see when they need it, and he offers his ears, his home, and his heart to all of them, and maybe part of it is because he needs them as much as they need him.

     Tony is a singularity. Steve finds that he's glad to have him.


	4. bruce and thor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thor being out of sorts is a big event that nobody wants to witness. but bruce has a favour that needs repaying anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its 3 am my leg hurts and bruce/thor is my brotp
> 
> kill me

When Thor is upset, it is an event. It garners the attention of everyone in the Tower. Despite being the god of thunder, Thor is a solid block of sometimes-quiet, sometimes-very-boisterous-and-overenthusiastic cheer and optimism. It takes something pretty big to blot out Thor's sunshine, and that something usually wears a green cape and needs to cut his damn greasy hair.

Bruce looks up from the petri dish he is bent over, his eyes finding Thor on the couch in a corner of the lab he sometimes shares with Tony. The man himself is puttering around and tinkering with his repulsors, dead to the world outside JARVIS as usual.

People sometimes snuck down here to find a little peace; they said that watching Bruce and Tony work was relaxing. He once found Natasha seated where Thor was, a cold beer in each hand and a sort of expectant expression on her face, watching Tony buzz around his workbench. By the time he noticed her, the beer was warm and a couple hours had passed, but whatever was bothering her seemed to have been soothed by coming to the lab to watch the Tony Stark and Bruce Banner Fireworks.

This time, however, it seems it is up to Bruce to see what is going on. With a shrug, the doctor pushes back from his desk and moseys over to take the seat opposite Thor, who sits with his shoulders hunched, elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them, the very picture of a lost, lonely child.

After a moment, the larger man looks up at him. Bruce meets his eyes and, for just a second, he looks so _old_. He really looks to be a deity that people had worshipped for thousands of years. Something heavy is on his mind today, it seems. Bruce has neither the disposition or the degree to handle this kind of head business, but Thor had always been one of his favourites. He'll give it a shot.

"So, have you been back home lately?"

What an awful way to start it off. Bruce cringes internally and Thor gives him a little smile that says he knows that Bruce knows that Thor hasn't left Earth since he unceremoniously dropped his little brother at Odin's feet (literally) and surrendered him to his father's ire after New York.

But it's at least enough of a diving block for Thor to murmur -- quiet for all that the man is usually like his own surround-sound system cranked up to eleven -- "My thoughts are troubled lately, Dr. Banner. I wonder what has become of my brother."

Bruce makes to reassure Thor that Odin won't have done anything drastic, that he's sure Loki's under lock and key somewhere in his home realm, but Thor shakes his head and says, "I do not know where I went wrong."

Bruce blinks. He hesitates.

"Tell me about him."

Thor looks up again.

"The real Loki. The brother who loved you. The man you so clearly adored, tell me about that one. Not the one who tried to murder us all, the one you loved."

The bright sunshine smile everyone is so familiar with lights up Thor's face for a brief moment as he thinks, remembering.

 

"Once," he says, "Just before my coronation ceremony, Loki and I paused for a moment to talk. I was nervous, and it showed. My brother reassured me, told me I looked like a king even though I was still a selfish child, and performed a bit of trickery on an unsuspecting servant that I hadn't seen since our youth. Just for me. Loki was always good with spells and magic, but he was even better with me. Though I often ignored him, he always knew what was best."

 

Bruce smiles slightly at the thought of Thor, fretting like a bride before her wedding, pacing outside his father's hall.

 

"I am... Ashamed. I have failed my little brother," Thor says quietly. "I was too stubborn and pig-headed to see that I was neglecting him. I loved him the most -- he was my brother, and my closest friend -- and yet I pushed him aside in my rush to become Father's favourite. I know that I am changed now, that I have matured, that I am no longer as much an arrogant boy, but..."

Thor's jaw locks, frustration crossing his face. Bruce adjusts his glasses and nods.

"You're sad that it took the loss of your only brother and your best friend to make you grow up."

The larger man nods, his expression tight.

"I do not know what to do. I have not felt this lost since Mjolnir refused to respond to me when I first came here."

 

With a sigh, the doctor runs one hand through his curly hair and grips Thor's clasped hands with the other.

"Thor... Sometimes there's just nothing you can do. You were a kid, you made a mistake. I won't excuse your arrogance for you, but I will tell you that something had to give; you _had_ to come to Earth and learn what Odin was trying to teach you.

"It sucks, but you're stuck with the choices you make. If I hadn't been so absorbed in my work before my accident, I could be in Harlem right now with Betty, still researching gamma radiation.But here I am, stuck with all of these crazies, and I'm trying to make the best of it. There are a lot of things I mess up, and there are so many times that I wish I could just run away or go back and change what happened. But I can't, and maybe that's okay, because it means that I get you, and Tony, and Steve, and Natasha, and Clint, and Phil. Sometimes I want to give up and see if there's not a way I can just get my life over with already, but..." Bruce stops, looks around the bright lab at Tony's schematics and notes and blaring music, and at his own (significantly tidier) workstation. "There's enough good here to keep me going."

 

Thor has a little crease between his brows, and Bruce is struck by a sudden urge to smooth it away with his thumb like a mother would.

"Don't give up on Loki. Somewhere underneath all that crazy is a man who loves his big brother. Maybe one day you can dig him out again."

 

Finally, the line of Thor's shoulders evens out and his posture relaxes a little. The man smiles broadly; he leans over to clap a hand on Bruce's shoulder and squeeze, his eyes overly-bright.

"Thank you, Dr. Banner," he says solemnly. "I am often troubled by thoughts of what may become of Loki. Perhaps, now, I can instead concern myself with ways I can convince him to give up his foolish love for revenge and return to the brother I once knew.

"I still have much to learn about Earth," he sighs, "But I have always known that you are good people. I am glad to have found peace here; I have become used to wandering the halls when my mind troubles me so."

 

"You're welcome to come visit any time you feel like it, big guy. I'm glad you got what you needed," Tony calls off-handedly from his workbench. "We seem to be developing quite the therapy business, Doctor -- maybe we should start charging a fee?"

The engineer snickers and crumbles up the file he was reading, effortlessly throwing it into the basketball hoop that JARVIS set up as a trash can, whooping when the buzzer sounds his goal. Bruce snorts.

"Says the billionaire," he grumbles, looking up to see that Thor has stood and is leaving. He whacks Tony heartily on the shoulder on his way out in a manly gesture of solidarity; Tony is nearly brought to his knees, but he wheezes out a "Same to you, big fella" anyway.

 

Bruce feels the Tower's equilibrium slide back into place. He's relieved to have soothed Thor's guilty conscience at least a little.

Thor, for all that he was so obviously not from "around here", was perhaps the first person on the team to really get him to open up. Tony was as sweet as a peach, and his refusal to ignore Bruce's big green elephant in the room like everyone else was a big relief, but one of the strongest memories he has of the battle in New York is his fight with Thor on the Helicarrier.

He vaguely remembers being very distressed, and then suddenly there's Thor gripping at the Other Guy's arm and yelling, "We are not your enemies, Banner! Try to think!"

 

Thor never viewed Bruce as a separate entity from the Other Guy. The Hulk was just Bruce, but bigger, to him. Thor never once treated him like he was a threat or a danger or a ticking time bomb, and that was something that the doctor is immensely grateful for.

If he could repay that by boosting Thor's confidence in himself and helping him to keep his faith in his brother, then Bruce would be happy to do so again and again.

 

As he returns to his station, he notices that Tony is smiling impishly.

 

"You did that on purpose, you rotten little bastard."

"Oh Bruce, I love it when you talk dirty."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW, there is no excuse for my absence from this  
> i just have had no inspiration regarding this fic but i swear to god im not abandoning it  
> there are only a couple more things i want to do with this before i finish it, but theres still work to do!!
> 
> im so so so sorry i left this for nearly 4 months :(
> 
> dont expect frequent updates, but definitely expect this to be finished before september uvu
> 
> excuse any formatting errors; im posting on my phone  
> ill fix up any eyesores in the afternoon -- sorry if this distracts you!


	5. clint, natasha, and phil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's not so much red that pours from natasha romanoff's ledger, in her eyes, as another colour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think that phil and clint and nat are totally the three musketeers of a friends-with-benefits kind of relationship and you cannot stop me

A shot rings out, and Natasha feels a bolt of fear slice through her chest. Her head snaps around, trying to pick out the offending weapon and its holder, and her eyes meet those of a young police officer -- Trainee, first day out, _damn_ it -- and his shaking hands, clutching a regulation pistol. The next thing she sees is Phil Coulson on the ground, a small group of SHIELD agents and police clustered around him. After a moment's observation, she knows that the wound isn't fatal -- Left shoulder, above the collarbone, bleeding under control, conscious, angry... Fine -- and she makes for the nearest fire escape.

Clint observes the whole ordeal from his perch on a rooftop about sixty meters away, and he knows from his partner's stance and the exact curve of her barely perceptible frown that Phil is going to be okay and that she is very, very angry.

With a sigh of "Natasha" and a fond little smile, the bowman predicts her path on top of the nearest building and waits patiently for her to reach her own perch. With a final glance at where the cluster of agents is helping Phil to stand up, he follows. He finds Natasha with the toes of her boots just over the edge of the roof's wall, sat forward on her calves with a knife dancing prettily in her hands. Her eyes are on a cop.

"He shot Coulson."  
"So you're gonna knife him? From four stories up? That's cruel, Natasha."  
"He _shot_ Coulson."  
"Phil is fine. He's already getting into the car, look, he's okay. He had a vest on anyway, and the cop is just a kid."

Natasha's shoulders shift in mild discomfort. Clint dangles his legs off the rooftop and gently turns her chin up from the street to look at him. There is a warning in the lock of her jaw and he's reminded that he is the only one allowed to touch her like that.

"Hey," he says.  
"Just like Budapest all over again," she murmurs. Clint is thrown back into memory.

They do remember it differently. Clint remembers their brief stay in Hungary as the time he confirmed his suspicion that Natasha was who he could trust to watch his back (and also how incredibly, painfully hot she was, and how great between the sheets, but mostly as the whole partner thing). Natasha remembers it as the time she shot Phil Coulson.

Clint was sent to kill her. He made a different call. It ended in a firefight between the two of them and a roadblock buzzing with SHIELD agents. Coulson knelt behind the partial shelter of a cement road divider, his pistol leveled at the two and his finger squeezing the trigger. Natasha noticed first, in the hail of bullets, and pulled her own trigger. She shot him right in the chest, over the heart, an excellent shot as always. He was wearing a vest then, too, but down he went.

She avoided Coulson when she finally joined SHIELD. It wasn't hard at first, as he spent a week or so in the medical bay of HQ with bruises and shortness of breath. But when he returned to duty she memorised his routes and purposely did not take them. Clint knew Natasha -- he _knew_ her, in every sense, including the biblical one -- and he knew when she was hiding. She came to her SHIELD-assigned apartment the second week to find him waiting. She looked Coulson in the eye the next morning.

"No, it isn't at all like Budapest," he says quietly. "We were being shot at by aliens this time." She lets out a breath through her nose that he counts as a laugh. "Besides, that cop has obviously never dealt with anything besides a parking ticket. If I were him, I'd have twitched too if Phil yelled at me after I had just witnessed a giant hulking lizard man spray acid at the police force."  
She smiles the smallest bit. She knows Clint is right, that it is all okay, that she should not be so flustered, but she finds herself out of her own control. Natasha still very much feels guilty for the fact that her first meeting with Phil Coulson ended in several dead agents and the boss himself gasping for air on the asphalt. She loves and trusts Phil, and so does he, but for all the cruel things Natasha has done, this one hurts the most.

Loki once said that her ledger was dripping red. She believes it is not so much red as the exact shade of purple on the bruise on Phil Coulson's chest. Clint touches her shoulder in a feather-light mimicry of a gesture Phil makes when attempting to calm her. With a deep breath, Natasha has herself in hand again.

"Phil knows we love him. And we know he loves us, too. And I know the idea of sticking a sick knife in this guy's back from forty feet up is really awesome, but right now I imagine he's in a bit of pain and would appreciate our presence." She blinks, and her gaze snaps back to Clint's face from where she had been eyeing the cop. He silently plucks the knife out of her stilled fingers and tucks it into her belt.

When they enter Phil's room in medical, they stand on opposite sides and wind their hands in his and kiss his forehead. He smiles and chuckles, leaning into the touch.

"If you had knifed that cop, I'd have benched you in a hot second, Romanoff."  
"Sorry for depriving you of your fun."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from the relationship tags in this fic you might have assumed that i would write some superspy friendship and then some paperwork friendship  
> but alas it is not to be  
> i love the idea of clint/phil but its been like 84 years since i saw the avengers and i cant for the life of me dredge up the will to write another chapter on just them
> 
> this is it  
> started from the bottom now we here
> 
> clint and nat are obviously tight friends if not lovers, although i prefer them to have a sort of undefined relationship: they arent a couple but they share a bed some nights, and theyre more than friends and partners but their personal relationship doesnt interfere with their work  
> friends with benefits. it works
> 
> and coulson is so so integral to who natasha is now, i think  
> he likely backed clint in not killing her (if not before even sending him to budapest, then certainly after the fact) and we know hes clints handler... so three-ways happen?? i dont know i just. three musketeers ok i love
> 
> anyways  
> i hope that this was ok and that i have made up for the first fic in this series  
> all the positive (and heartbroken hehe) comments and kudos and even bookmarks (!!!) on these two works have made me so happy and really boosted my confidence in my writing uwu  
> so i hope that i was able to characterise these kids well enough -- please feel free to critique all of it, give pointers, spellcheck, anything  
> i only post at 4 am from my phone or never at all so something is probably wrong
> 
> *kiss* thank you for bearing with me uvu

**Author's Note:**

> i hope that was alright  
> tell me if we need more blankets with hot tea or something i shall provide


End file.
